The Parts Men Play eBook

It is one of the tragedies of the elite that
even peers are not equal. The law of class distinction,
that amazing doctrine of timidity, penetrated even
the oak door of 8 Chelmsford Gardens. The Ironmonger’s
daughter found that being the daughter of a man who
had made an honest living rendered her socially the
unequal of the daughters of men who, acting on a free
translation of ’The earth is the Lord’s,’
had done nothing but inherit unearned substance.

Then there was her cheerfulness, and the menacing
voice!

Turning from the aloofness of the exclusive, Lady
Durwent thought of taking in famous performing Lions
and feeding them. Unfortunately the market was
too brisk, and the only Lion she could get was an Italian
tenor from Covent Garden, who refused to roar, but
left a poignant memory of garlic.

It was then that a brilliant idea entered her brain.
Lady Durwent decided to cultivate unusual
people.

No longer would she batter at oak doors that refused
to open; no more would she dangle morsels of food
in front of overfed Lions. She would create
a little Kingdom of remarkable people—­not
those acclaimed great by the mealy mob, but those
whose genius was of so rare and subtle a growth that
ordinary eyes could not detect it at all. Her
only fear was that she might be unable to discover
a sufficient number to create a really satisfactory
clientele.

But she reckoned without her London.

For every composer in the Metropolis who is trying
to translate the music of the spheres, there are a
dozen who can only voice the discordant jumble of
their minds or ask the world to listen to the hollow
echo of their creative vacuum. For every artist
striving to catch some beauty of nature that he may
revisualise it on canvas, there are a score whose
eyes can only cling to the malformation of existence.
For every writer toiling in the quiet hours to touch
some poor, dumb heart-strings, or to open unseeing
eyes to the joy of life, there are many whose gaze
is never lifted from the gutter, so that, when they
write, it is of the slime and the filth that they have
smelt, crying to the world that the blue of the skies
and the beauty of a rose are things engendered of
sentimental minds unable to see the real, the vital
things of life.

To this community of poseurs Lady Durwent jingled
her town house and her title—­and the response
was instantaneous. She became the hostess of
a series of dinner-parties which gradually made her
the subject of paragraphs in the chatty columns of
the press, and of whole chapters in the gossip of
London’s refined circles.

Her natural cheerfulness expanded like a sunflower,
and when her son Malcolm secured a commission in the
—­th Hussars, her triumph was complete.
Even the staggering news that Dick had been taken
away from Eton to avoid expulsion for drunkenness
proved only a momentary cloud on the broad horizon
of her contentment.